The Defense Information Systems Agency says an eventual commercial cloud buy probably won't be bundled into a single contract vehicle, but in the meantime, DoD needs to work through challenges involving security, approval policy and network operations.

The platform, called Acropolis, is initially being used only for network operations and cybersecurity data, but officials plan to expand it to help solve big data challenges around financial and acquisition information.

Director of the Defense Research Projects Agency Director Arati Prabhakar says DARPA's budget wasn't decimated by sequestration, but it is being slowly eroded. The Office of Naval Research and the Marine Corps team up for technology demonstration. John Moniz, ONR program manager, says marines on the front lines can get real-time data using smartphones. At the recent AFCEA Mobile Symposium, Defense Information Systems Agency officials talk about mobile security possibilities.

As the Defense Department builds out a technology infrastructure that's designed to be the latest generation of commercial mobile devices into users' hands, it's still unsure how to meet a key security requirement: identity management systems that comply with the military's existing requirements for secure user authentication.

Brigadier General Brian Dravis, director of the Joint Information Environment Technical Synchronization Office, says he was skeptical of the JIE initiative at first but, after four months on the job, he's now very confident the department is getting it right.

Congress approves a $175 million spending package that will let the Army move ahead with plans to consolidate 400 IT security watchtowers down to around a dozen. The cyber initiative is part of broader effort to move the entire DoD toward the Joint Information Environment.

Military services and agencies have 120 days to draft strategies for shutting down their own email systems and migrating to DISA's enterprise email offering. The DoD CIO ordered the move to begin no later than the first quarter of 2015.

The Defense Information Systems Agency believes it can save the military services big bucks on data storage, processing and communications by becoming a one-stop-shop for IT in the continental U.S. Under a new Pentagon plan, it's the military's only provider for large data centers.

The Army says it has more next-generation network capacity than it needs, and the Air Force has the opposite problem. A new agreement to share infrastructure will save the Air Force more than $1 billion.

Two furloughed feds share how they turned the negative of an unpaid day off into a positive. One performed service projects for the community where he lives. The other launched a website to keep feds informed about sequestration and furloughs.

The director of the Defense Information Systems Agency says the agency will spend the next year focusing on a faster, more agile acquisition process to accelerate the way it delivers technology, rather than letting procurements drag on for years.

The Defense Information Systems Agency will issue several contracts under a unified capabilities initiative to move virtually all of DoD's communications onto Internet Protocol-based networks, and to better integrate voice, video and data services.